The denial of Bryan Brown’s application for admission to the Indiana Bar was nothing but tyranny, and leads me to assume that I myself am practicing law on borrowed time. I’ve met Bryan, and he’s far fitter than I to practice law.

Please pray for Bryan as he argues his case to the Seventh Circuit next Thursday at 11:30 a.m. EST.

By turning this case into a capital prosecution, prosecutors ensured jurors would have to be “death qualified” and thus would know from the outset that prosecutors wanted Anthony executed for her alleged crimes.  Though sometimes death-qualified juries may show a greater willingness to convict, here I suspect that the death-qualification process could have primed the jurors to expect a forensic smoking gun showing conclusively that Casey Anthony murdered her daughter in cold blood.  When no such smoking gun was presented by the prosecution, the jurors may have ultimately been much more willing (and perhaps even eager) to find reasonable doubt on all serious charges.

Bryan Brown:

Today’s verdict is yet another sign on the road to national perdition.  The circumstantial case agaisnt Casey was very strong — darn near ironclad.  I doubt the jury actually doubted that Casey killed her baby.  They just get it –  it is o.k. to kill your babies in modern America if you want to.  No, not the best thing to do, or the nice thing to do, or even the right thing to do.  But hey, it is nothing to kill someone over, so Casey walks.   I guess little Caylee should just be thankful she had any life at all, that her mother “just chose life” and did not take Caylee to an abortionist.

“Strike Lawyer” (whose coverage of the trial was the best out there):

It boils down to one thing, in my view.  The case is won or lost in the closing arguments.  Baez was just extremely effective, he believed in his case and he was sincere.  And critically, and somewhat amazingly, he succeeded in turning the tables in the credibility contest.  He appeared to be honest and earnest, and he made the prosecutors look like overbearing and shallow assholes who trafficked in slogans, like “100% of accidental deaths are reported” and “two words:  pathological liar”.  Baez was a hell of a lot more likeable, and without a trace of theatricality or phoniness, so when he came up with a pithy phrase like “They’re trying to make you hate her because she’s a lying slut, appealing to your anger and emotion.”, it didn’t sound like sloganeering.  It sounded like he really meant it.

CONTRAST Jeff Gamso’s July 4th post contrasting the relative “necessity” of dissolving political bands in 1776 and now with Norm Pattis’ July 4th post contrasting the trial in 1770 of the British soldiers charged with murder for their role in the Boston Massacre with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2011 in the case of Harry Connick, District Attorney v. John Thompson (throwing out a $14 million jury award for an innocent man who was imprisoned for 18 years, including 14 on death row, because prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated him).

A skeptic might theorize that Osama bin Laden is in fact not dead but alive and well in the CIA witness protection program somewhere. After all, the best evidence of his death has already been buried at sea, and U.S. officials are trying to decide whether a photo they have of his corpse is just too graphic to release. After all, Osama has been great for government business over the last ten years. His “disappearance” now won’t undo or slow down any of that, and the timing couldn’t be better for Obama.

I myself don’t go so far (despite the U.S. government’s habit of telling outrageous lies to “its” people). I merely note that the killing of bin Laden by Team America doesn’t make me feel any safer. Quite the opposite. And the threat of reprisals for his death is already being used by U.S. officials to remind us how much we need them.

You know what would make me feel safer? If the government which purports to act in my name stopped fucking with people all over the world.

“Governments don’t live together, people live together.” (H/T Bryan Brown at the ArchAngel Institute.)

What I mean by describing myself as a Christian Deist is illuminated by the following two articles, my discovery of which online was prompted by my discovery in a bookstore yesterday of Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief:

Thomas Jefferson’s Bible and the Gospel of Thomas

On Leo Tolstoy’s Gospel in Brief

I happen to “believe,” based on my own fallible reasoning, that Jesus, inter alia, was born of the Virgin Mary and rose from the dead, but I don’t pretend to believe those things beyond a reasonable doubt, and to the contrary am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that “salvation” doesn’t depend on such things, but rather on realizing the divinity within and without. When at around age eighteen I was confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church a couple weeks after being baptized, I chose Thomas, who is described in the Gospel of John as doubting that Jesus rose from the dead until seeing the risen Christ for himself, as my confirmation name. Nowadays, more than two decades later, I no longer believe in the authority of the Church, and am inclined to believe that the most “authoritative” of the gospels is the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, according to which Jesus said, among other things:

If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the (Father’s) kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.

. . .

Don’t lie, and don’t do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed.

. . .

Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is. Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death.

. . .

Love your friends like your own soul, protect them like the pupil of your eye.

. . .

I took my stand in the midst of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. My soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their hearts and do not see, for they came into the world empty, and they also seek to depart from the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, then they will change their ways.

. . .

If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty.

. . .

Be passersby.

. . .

Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy.

. . .

Look to the living one as long as you live, otherwise you might die and then try to see the living one, and you will be unable to see.

. . .

Those who know all, but are lacking in themselves, are utterly lacking.

. . .

If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.

. . .

I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

. . .

Images are visible to people, but the light within them is hidden in the image of the Father’s light. He will be disclosed, but his image is hidden by his light.

. . .

When you see your likeness, you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will have to bear!

. . .

How miserable is the body that depends on a body, and how miserable is the soul that depends on these two.

. . .

Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Don’t you understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside?

. . .

Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.

. . .

The heavens and the earth will roll up in your presence, and whoever is living from the living one will not see death.

. . .

[The kingdom] will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.